Gisela Baurmann dreams of ocean habitats crocheted out of kelp and avalanche barriers crocheted out of steel. Baurmann is an architect and a crocheter, and if her research is successful, she might just meld the two into a new architectural field: crochet-based construction.

She calls her research Hyperstitch, the prefix hyper a reference both to the physical scale of her work and to the field of hyperbolic geometry; stitch a reference to the building blocks of crochet. For the past two years, Baurmann, an adjunct associate professor at Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture, has been working on Hyperstitch with graduate students to answer two questions: Can we design a robotic arm that can crochet? And is there a crochet-able material with enough structural strength for large-scale construction? If the answer to both is yes, then a crocheted sea wall may just be coming to an ocean near you.

Crochet has proven itself a strong, sustainable method for large-scale public art and even smaller-scale architectural forms. The possibilities are out there, rooted in an art form that has been commonplace for centuries. So why is its body of research so slim? The answer both feels very simple (sexism, ageism, classism, etc.) and is due to the complexity of crochet itself. In both cases, it could be that the same history, culture, and science that makes crochet crochet is what has kept it from widespread research.

Baurmann learned to crochet from the traditional primary school she attended growing up in Germany, where the girls learned to crochet, knit, and sew, while the boys learned woodworking.

The fiber arts—including knitting, quilting, and embroidery—have traditionally been considered feminine work of the domestic sphere, often passed through the generations as profitable trades. From crochet lacemaking in Ireland, which grew in popularity in the mid-1800s as a response to the economic hardships of the Great Famine, to the fiber arts workshops Japanese Americans organized while incarcerated at concentration camps during World War II, “domestic crafts often arose as a form of creative resilience in the face of economic hardship and oppression,” Elena Kanagy-Loux writes in her essay “My Grandma’s Doilies Are Not a Joke” (Kanagy-Loux, 2024).

Still considered mere grandmotherly hobbies in a society riddled with -isms, the fiber arts are undervalued as specialized skills and art forms—finding crochet in a fine arts museum, let alone a graduate-level architecture seminar, is rare.

For Baurmann, frustration with the gendered separation of her schooling fueled action: “I of course had to make sure I did the other thing too,” she told me. “And I worked with a carpenter for half a year after high school.” It’s no surprise that she ended up at the forefront of this innovative field, pushing the boundaries of crochet in scale and public perception alike.

But she’s not the only one.

Visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, may have been surprised by Ernesto Neto’s 2021 sculpture SunForceOceanLife: a spiral, galaxy-shaped walkway crocheted out of polymer string, suspended 12 feet in the air and spanning roughly the area of a tennis court. As they took their first tentative steps on the walkway, trepidation gave way to glee as they found that it held their weight.

Structural strength is what brought Neto to crochet for large-scale sculptures. The endless possibilities it brings captivated him: “From a single thread, you can build anything from just one line,” he told Say Who in a 2025 interview. “That’s very important to me” (Sansom, 2025).

That’s what brought Jin Choi and Thomas Shine of Choi+Shine Architects to crochet, too. “I started to look at lace,” Choi explained, “and there was a huge story behind it: history, tradition, the women’s struggle and labor struggle, and about femininity.” She developed a proposal for a lace canopy that would hang over the Herengracht, one of Amsterdam’s most famous canals. It was accepted for the 2016 Amsterdam Light Festival, which meant they had just one tiny problem: They hadn’t figured out a way to fabricate it.

“I thought that it would be really beneficial if I can do something with a continuous strand,” Choi said. “And there are not many methods that allow you to [do that].” Enter: crochet.

How Crochet Works

Crochet is made stitch by stitch with a continuous line of fiber (often yarn), which is pulled into loops by the curved head of a crochet hook, a thin rod about the length of a hand. Each loop builds on the last, adding to the piece until it’s the shape and size the artist intends.

Working stitch by stitch means there is only one active stitch at a time (the one you’re working on at that moment), making the resulting fabric quite strong. Each stitch is an individual building block directly and independently linked to the stitches that surround it, yielding a uniquely intricate and strong structure.

As variables change—using different variations or numbers of stitches, for example—the local (stitch-by-stitch) components develop a feedback loop with the global (fabric as a whole). Each stitch is made up of several lines that can be crocheted into, so even if the pattern stays the same,  one has to ensure they’re crocheting into the right loop. This grants an incredible sense of flexibility as the artist can add onto the design in almost any location or direction to make flat fabric into complex 3D objects, like sculptures or dolls—all while still using the same thread, just as Choi had hoped.

Math and Materiality

In 1997, mathematician Daina Taimina discovered that this meant crochet could also be used to create mathematically correct models of hyperbolic planes, which are common geometries in nature. “The hyperbolic is everything that has little curls around the edges, like cauliflower or kale,” Baurmann explained, waving her fingers to demonstrate the curls.

Hyperstitch builds on Taimina’s discovery and techniques, which she taught to Baurmann. Over the years, she and her students have worked toward a more precise geometry of crochet through analysis, architectural sketches, and computer modeling. They even printed 3D models of crochet. “They’re beautiful, beautiful little objects,” Baurmann said. “But they’re not emergent”—printing them top-down as one piece loses the local nuance of stitch-by-stitch creation.

As Baurmann and her students scale up their prototypes (currently the size of small pavilions), their aim is to identify materials that are lightweight, structurally strong, flexible enough to be crocheted, and cheap enough to readily acquire. They’ve tested steel cables (too tough on hands), basket weaving reed (has to stay wet during the process), and even garden hoses (too heavy).

The current trend is foam—insulation foam, weather-stripping foam, ducting material, and so forth—but Baurmann hopes that they can find something more environmentally sustainable. “Right now in the fashion industry, they [can] use kelp to fabricate threads,” Baurmann shared excitedly. “You can buy a sweater that’s made from kelp.” To bring that fabrication process, she says, “That’s my idea. That’s my fantasy.”

Also looking for sustainable alternatives, the architecture firm DUS decided to crochet a wedding chapel out of ventilation pipe in 2009. They collaborated with crochet expert Sandy de Lange on pattern design, then took three days and two kilometers of ventilation pipe to crochet an ethereal chapel that fit fifty people.

Artist Sheila Pepe likewise gave materials new life in her first outdoor exhibition in 2023. My Neighbor’s Garden comprised nearly 14 kilometers of nylon string, cotton string, and household items like shoelaces, paracord, and rubber bands, items often used until they fall apart or disappear under refrigerators and into closets.

“What’s great about crochet,” Choi shared, “is that you can always unravel … and reuse if you wanted to.” This means that if Choi+Shine decided to retire any of the dozen or so lace-inspired public art sculptures they’ve installed around the globe, they’d not just be recyclable but reusable. Because crochet is made stitch by stitch, it can be undone the same way. There’s something beautiful about this, the knowledge that each of these works can be unraveled for the exact same reason that they’re incredibly strong: They’re made one stitch at a time. Just undo the final knot of a work and pull, and the full piece can be wound back into a ball, still a single, continuous line.

Hands and Machines

Every single project this essay has mentioned was made by hand. Actually, by many hands. I know this in part because the artists readily acknowledge the intense amount of labor these large-scale projects require. I also know it because we’ve yet to develop technology that can do it for us.

Although the first mechanical knitting machine was invented in 1589, the first prototype of a “true” crochet machine wasn’t patented until 2019. Developed by researchers at the Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences, the prototype seems promising, though its functionality is still minimal, including limited options for materials and manual adjustments to create more complex structures.

Over at Pratt, Baurmann and her students have been iterating with a robotic arm, adjusting the hook design, the tool path, and even the robot itself—thanks to Greg Sheward, the professor and facilities manager overseeing robotics operations and research at the School of Architecture. Baurmann is confident that one day they’ll be able to work with the robot to fabricate large-scale crochet out of everything from steel cable to a yet-to-be-developed kelp material. For now, the robot still requires a ready (human) hand to help guide and course correct. 

This circumstance feels deeply in the spirit of crochet, in part because it’s a craft that’s been passed down through generations. Many crochet artists talk about not just when they learned the skill, but from whom: Sheila Pepe’s mother taught her when she was a child, while Ernesto Neto learned after years of working with textiles as an artist. In 1984, he asked his grandmother to teach him tricot (a type of woven knitting), and his great aunt piped up from the couch, saying “Weaving, no. You have to learn crochet!” And so he did.

Nearly every artist statement or profile that’s focused on crochet mentions the implied femininity of the art form. Even Pratt’s website commends itself for taking crochet seriously with Hyperstitch. While it doesn’t refer to crochet in design as a new use, it does refer to Hyperstitch as “releasing the technique of its limitations to the domestic realm” (Gisela Baurmann’s Hyperstitch).

In a way, each crochet-based architectural project or artwork is an implicit call to take vernacular art forms, and particularly this vernacular art form, seriously. To paraphrase DUS’s manifesto, architects have a large stage, and the scale of these pieces make crochet impossible to ignore.

That said, even DUS’s own crocheted chapel had some skeptics. One magazine put the credentials of their collaborator, Sandy de Lange, in quotation marks (“crochet expert”), suggesting that perhaps her skills don’t count as expertise. Are there any credentials that could lead de Lange and other artists to be considered experts in their own right? Expertise here is tied up in the subjective idea of “artistry,” which always seems to lie on one side of the classist, ageist, and misogynist lens that vernacular art forms are viewed through.

Choi+Shine aim to subvert these preconceived notions as they collaborate with communities on their lace-inspired artworks. As a decorative item, lace has traditionally been made by the working class and purchased by the wealthy, “reveal[ing] the divided class society.” But their art aims to bring people together “regardless of … origin, age, socio-economical and political status,” according to one artist statement (Choi & Shine, 2024). In this cognizant shift, their work asks people to reconsider preconceived notions regarding who makes art and to whom it belongs.

This feels, to an extent, at odds with the idea of a new crochet machine. Of course we’ve had other textile machines for centuries—also often run by working class women and girls in horrifying working conditions—but the fact that robotics, like architecture, is coded as a more masculine field feels different. I do wonder if the development of a crochet machine, particularly if it can be used in construction, will help crochet be taken more seriously by demonstrating that it’s not “just” a grandmotherly craft. But I also worry that if it’s “masculine” fields that serve to elevate crochet, it won’t be our foremothers who are celebrated, but the scientific fields dominated by men who finally considered their centuries-old craft to be worthy of research.

Sheila Pepe considers the layers of gender, labor, and mechanization in the roots of her work, noting that gendered expectations mean that large-scale crochet artistry can feel at odds with itself: “Up high, in my overalls and my crochet hook in hand, on top of a drivable scissor lift, it’s the funniest gender joke in the world for me,” she told New York Times writer Hilarie M. Sheets in 2023. “Now you’re Grandma! Now you’re Uncle Joe!”

For now, the collaborative nature of robotic crochet is comforting. It feels linked to the necessity of community, a fundamental part of crochet’s charm. This also pushes back against the prevailing cultural idea that the best art is made by a solitary genius (ideally a cis man, white, emotionally tortured despite his advantages—you know the deal). And certainly, there are some large-scale fiber artists who labor alone, the slow and painstaking work part of their process, a layer of performance art imbued in the final product.

But the crochet artists I’ve mentioned see the community aspect of their work as key, celebrating not just the work but the results of the time spent together. The acknowledgment that community is vital—or at least that teamwork is—parallels practices in the fields of architecture and construction, which are largely team-based operations (though the last century certainly does have its share of seemingly solo star-chitects). Baurmann even mentioned teamwork as a skill her students practice via Hyperstitch, knowing that they’ll collaborate with fellow architects, engineers, stakeholders, and even politicians.

In asking community members to crochet with them, each artist fully understands what they’re asking of people: free labor in a field that can be undervalued or even expected to be produced freely. It’s not uncommon, after all, for someone to ask an acquaintance to make them a sweater (“I’d pay for the yarn, of course!”) or to expect an artist to feel comfortable being paid “in exposure.” Even just acknowledging this, whether with a symbolic payment or clear artistry credits, can change the framework.

A Community, Not a Factory

For her 2023 exhibition, installed in Madison Square Park, New York City, Sheila Pepe turned to community-based work. She paid recruits fifty dollars a day (a symbolic amount more than true compensation), but was clear with her intentions: “I never wanted an art factory,” she told the Times (Sheets, 2023). Instead, the group operated more like a traditional crafting circle, bonding quickly as they worked alongside each other. For centuries, women have met for political purposes under the guise of “feminine pursuits,” a source of inspiration for Pepe according to Brooke Kamin Rapaport, artistic director and chief curator at the Madison Square Park Conservancy. “These sewing circles and knitting clubs and quilting bees were forums to talk about women’s rights,” she shared with the Times, “to propel the abolition of slavery, to create garments and blankets sold to provide income” (Sheets, 2023). This practice flips the idea of the solitary genius on its head. Part of the power of these artworks—part of the reason they’re sustainable to continue making—is that they bring people together and forge community.

Jin Choi crocheted two installations almost entirely by herself before it became a crucial part of Choi+Shine’s public art to bring the community into the making process. She had tried recruiting crocheters to help with the first two, but the challenge of crocheting the thick polyester cord caused even the most experienced crocheters to give up or, even worse, simply disappear without a word.

But when a Vogue article about their work appeared, they received hundreds of letters, postcards, and emails from crocheters asking to join in.

Now, their “crochet army,” as they call their volunteers, is fundamental to their work. They’ve mailed crochet kits across the nation, each person sending back the completed work, as well as using all local volunteers. After crocheting, they settle into a large space and spend a few days sewing all the pieces together, teaching community members, who then take ownership over the project for a few hours before passing it off to the next person.

Mistakes are rare because “[the crocheters] want to be perfect,” Choi shared. They help each other along the way, whether asking questions in the Facebook and WhatsApp groups made for remote collaboration or guiding people through in-person making. They’ve even orchestrated repairs when the works have been damaged—as in the case of a few rowdy Australians who apparently forgot they weren’t in a jungle gym.

One of Choi+Shine’s most memorable community moments came when they were working on their piece ARIZONA! in Scottsdale. “Most of the volunteers are grandmas,” Shine said. Imagine their surprise when a group of fraternity brothers showed up, having decided to make it their annual volunteer project.

“You had these grandmas helping these college kids put together this artwork,” Shine said. “One of the grandmas holds up a needle and shows him how to thread it. He goes, ‘Oh, there’s a hole in it! That’s how it works!’ Then they’re helping each other and laughing.”

Whether family, friends, neighbors, or strangers, these kinds of connections with each other and the craft form itself can last for the duration of the project, or for life. Working together, participants are able to accomplish a mammoth task, each bringing a humility to learn and the readiness to pass it along.

At the eleventh hour of an installation, Choi realized that they were somehow one piece short. It would take her about seven hours without breaks to make it by herself, and she didn’t know what to do. Her volunteers listened intently as she explained, then they began volunteering to complete specific portions.

“It was supposed to be one person for one motif,” Choi said. “There happened to be seven people, including myself… [All] did portions, and then we stitched them together within two hours.” The collective energy of the group meant they could be resilient, ready to adjust to the needs that arose, as malleable yet strong as crocheted fabric itself.

Malleability is what drew Baurmann to Hyperstitch and the idea of crocheted ocean habitats. The structure is “floppy and flexible and somehow harnesses the energy of its environment,” she told me. “And it’s still super resilient.” She likens it to a sailboat: “If you’re a good sailor, you can be in the craziest [storm and still sail].” Just as a skilled sailor navigates the weather to avoid damage, and just as a community comes together in challenging times, so does crochet: “It never breaks. It just keeps springing back into its original form, and that’s what I find fascinating.”

Though rigidity is often associated with strength and malleability with weakness, crochet proves otherwise. In “My grandma’s doilies are not a joke,” Elena Kanagy-Loux reminds us of this, asking, “When will we, as a culture, move beyond rigid hierarchies of value and celebrate domestic crafts in their own right?” (Kanagy-Loux, 2024). Perhaps crochet-based architecture and public art projects will be a step forward.

As much as I want Hyperstitch to succeed in its mission, I worry that only once a robot is able to crochet steel into buildings will the art form finally be considered “worth something.” Its perceived femininity will be seen as a bug, not a feature, and grandma’s doilies will be even less valued than they are today.

I worry, too, that the community-oriented energy of fiber arts will drift away, replaced by the quintessential solitary genius—or the robot who needs no extra set of hands. If that happens, we will have forgotten the ultimate metaphor and lesson of crochet. Even if we can do it alone, we lose so much by not embracing community as part of the artistic process.

By taking the vernacular arts more seriously, we can dream bigger, whether that dream is ocean habitats crocheted out of kelp, rowdy Australian–proof public art, or something still to come. The possibilities are out there. Perhaps as we continue to investigate them and to celebrate fiber artists, we’ll learn how to better respect crochet, and in doing so, each other.

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References

Amos, D. (2010, December 19). Framework knitters. The Nottinghamshire Heritage Gateway. 

Baurmann, G. (2025). Hooks and loops: The Hyperstitch. Pratt Institute.

Baurmann, G., & Taimina, D. (2013). Crocheting algorithms. Cornell Journal of Architecture, 9 Mathematics, 99–106.

Choi, J., & Shine, T. (2024). The urchins: Making. Choi+Shine Architects.

Ebert, G. (2021, June 15). A 79-foot labyrinth crocheted by Ernesto Neto hangs from the ceiling of a Houston museum. Colossal.

Ebert, G. (2025, January 31). Ernesto Neto crochets an enormous snake to slither inside Le Bon Marché. Colossal.

Ernst, S. (2025, February 17). Machine crochet for textiles and components. K-Mag.

Frank, P. (2012, May 16). Ernesto Neto’s crocheted “cuddle on the tightrope” comes to Nasher Sculpture Center. HuffPost.

Gisela Baurmann’s Hyperstitch. (n.d.). Pratt Institute, School of Architecture. 

Kanagy-Loux, E. (2024, April 25). My grandma’s doilies are not a joke. Hyperallergic. 

Preece, R. (2025, February 7). New beginning: A conversation with Ernesto Neto. Sculpture Magazine. 

Rosenberg, A. (2011, January 1). Wedding chapel / DUS Architects. ArchDaily.

Sansom, A. (2025, January 21). Ernesto Neto: Snaking together culture and nature. Say Who. 

Schulze, M. (2022, July 20). Ernesto Neto’s Gaia Mother Tree Crochet Work & 420kg of spices. Public Delivery. 

Sheets, H. M. (2023, June 22). Imagine Spider-Woman with a crochet hook. New York Times. Sheila Pepe: “My Neighbor’s Garden.” Madison Square Park Conservancy. (2023).

Sierzputowski, K. (2018, July 6). A 65-foot hand-crocheted tree gives visitors to Zurich’s train station a full sensory experience. Colossal.

Storck, J. L., Steenbock, L., Dotter, M., Funke, H., & Ehrmann, A. (2023). Principle capabilities of crocheted fabrics for composite materials. Journal of Engineered Fibers and Fabrics, 18.

Taimina, D. (n.d.). Mathematical imagery. American Mathematical Society.

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